Americans In Motion - Healthy Interventions (AIM-HI)

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The AAFP Americans In Motion - Healthy Interventions (AIM-HI) initiative was conceived to address the serious problems faced by this nation as people become more sedentary, reduce physical activity and grow increasingly obese, and to bring national emphasis to the need for better preventive services. The AAFP initiated AIM-HI to encourage and support individual family physicians seeking to address fitness from a broader perspective.

The family physician is uniquely positioned throughout the United States in urban, suburban and rural areas and can be at the center of the initiative due to the acceptance and respect they enjoy within their own communities. Family physicians care for the entire family and can implement cross-generational, culturally diverse programs that appropriately fit in each community and practice.

Vision

Promote "fitness" as a path to health for all members of the American family.

Mission

Improve the health of all Americans by implementing a multifaceted fitness program addressing physical activity, healthy eating, and emotional well-being in the individual, family and community.

Goals

Develop office-based and community-based interventions that will enable family physicians to teach patients and their families to become physically and emotionally fit and practice healthy eating.

Encourage family physicians to be fitness role models.

Improve family physicians’ ability to positively affect the fitness of their patients.

Enhance the awareness of family physicians’ unique ability to promote fitness within their communities.

The AIM-HI Approach

AIM-HI presents fitness—physical activity, healthy eating and emotional well-being—as “the treatment of choice” for prevention and management of many chronic conditions. AIM-HI helps family medicine practices create a fitness focus through implementation of these critical strategies:

Raising awareness among clinicians and office staff regarding their own personal fitness.

Creating an office environment that is conducive to integrating AIM-HI concepts into everyday office routines.

Using the AIM-HI philosophy and tools to help patients improve their fitness.

AIM-HI Research Study

AIM-HI and the AAFP National Research Network recently completed a three-year study that presented fitness as the treatment of choice for prevention and management of many chronic conditions.

This project evaluated a practice improvement program to improve family physicians’ delivery of effective patient-centered behavior change interventions for fitness — physical activity, healthy eating and emotional well-being. Family medicine offices that participated in the study:

Adapted their office environment and practice processes to promote fitness

Shifted from advice-giving to patient-centered lifestyle counseling

Integrated AIM-HI resources into office routines.

In the non-control group of the study, staff themselves were asked to make personal changes to improve their own fitness.

Results

Data from the study shows patient outcomes from baseline to four months demonstrated a: